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lomonaaerenTitle: To Hold or Break a Heart
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: AU starting in fifth year, angst, mild gore, mentions of violence and minor character deaths
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3000
Summary: When Harry goes to feed thestrals in the Forbidden Forest as a break from the Awful Year of Umbridge, he finds Theo Nott already there. An unexpected relationship forms, bound by silence and blood.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. Ale_aesthetic asked for a story with Harry/Theo, fifth year, and thestrals.
To Hold or Break a Heart
Harry ducked under the great branches of a dead oak that loomed above him, felt in his pocket for a slice of raw meat, glanced up, and froze.
There was another Hogwarts student standing in front of the thestrals, and it definitely wasn’t Luna Lovegood, the only other one Harry had thought might be out here. He was tall, with dark robes and dark brown hair bound in a twist that flowed halfway down his back.
He turned around when he heard Harry’s footsteps crunching in the dead grass and stood there staring at him.
Nott, Harry thought, but the word caught in his throat.
Nott was pale, thin, with black eyes that looked like slashes in his face. But more to the point, he was a Slytherin, and just in case Harry might have thought he was mistaken in that assumption, a silver snake pin wriggled across Nott’s collar.
Harry really did not want to deal with a Slytherin right now. He had come out to get away from Malfoy’s taunts about Harry not being able to play Quidditch anymore, and away from Umbridge, and away from—
Nott, he realized, was tense. But he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t laugh. He kept holding his hand out so that the tall thestral mare in front of him, who even loomed over Nott, could take delicate bites of what looked like a dead rabbit in his palm.
Harry was too tired to walk away or speak.
Instead, he stepped up beside Nott and held out his own offering. A thestral foal pranced towards him and grabbed the meat in sharp teeth, squealing. Nott took a jagged breath, but he didn’t say anything, either.
That was perfect. That was all Harry wanted.
He touched the foal’s neck as it devoured the beef he’d brought, and listened to Nott’s steady breathing beside him. It evened out, and Nott took another dead rabbit out of his robe pocket and held it out to another thestral. This one looked like a stallion.
The crunch of teeth on frozen flesh and bone and the tearing and ripping of fur soothed something inexplicable inside Harry.
He brought out more raw meat he’d got from the house-elves for the first foal and another who pranced up when the first piece was gone, and stroked their cold necks and touched their manes—like piano wire—and was exquisitely aware the whole time of Nott standing beside him.
Then the air beside Harry seemed to ripple, and he looked away from the foals for the first time since he’d started feeding the second one.
Nott was gone.
*
Harry ran into the Forest, his teeth bared and his feet whisper-quick in the leaves. Part of him thought this might be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, running into the Forbidden Forest at night with his hand ripped open and bleeding from Umbridge’s detention.
But he didn’t care. He didn’t. He was following the idea that had come to him earlier, and he would follow it to the end of the path.
When he came into the clearing where he had fed the thestral foals before, two great beasts were waiting for him. One was a stallion that loomed like a cabinet against the darkness, and one was a mare paler than most of them, with a sheen to her coat like silver. Harry promptly walked up to her and lifted his hand.
The mare sniffed, her nostrils opening into black pits as she did. Then she began to lap at the blood that coated Harry’s knuckles. Her tongue felt rough and bristly, like a cat’s.
Harry leaned against her, against the chill that beat at his legs and body like a patch of oddly-shaped wind, and panted, and didn’t even flinch when the stallion nudged his shoulder with a hard nose. The sound of the mare feeding didn’t travel far away from them.
But the sound that came from behind Harry did.
Harry opened his eyes and twisted his head. He couldn’t do anything else without moving his hand away from the mare’s mouth or nudging the stallion back from him.
And he didn’t want to.
Nott stood framed between two trees that arched above the path into the clearing, his eyes so wide that Harry thought he could see both himself and the thestrals in the other boy’s gaze. Harry shook his head and turned away, shutting his eyes, refusing the vision, leaning on the mare.
It didn’t matter. If Nott went back and spread around the story that Harry was mental and liked to associate with death horses in the Forest, how would that be worse than the ones people snickered about right now?
Silence, and more silence, and then there was the crushing noise of grass as Nott walked forwards. Harry snuggled further into the mare’s side. Maybe it was just because the mare’s tongue touching him was like someone petting his hand, but Harry did feel like the wound hurt less.
The stallion turned sideways, his tail flicking lightly against Harry’s shoulder. Then Harry heard the gulp and working of his throat, and knew Nott must have given the thestral something to eat.
It didn’t matter. Harry leaned on the thestral mare and let the world spiral away around him.
Something brushed his shoulder. Nott was touching him with a hand splayed flat.
Harry cuddled closer into the mare and let the world spiral and fall away even further.
*
The wound that the thestral mare’s tongue had cleaned was healed.
Harry was staring at the scars the letters had healed into that day in the library, when he had some time by himself because Hermione had gone to get a book and wasn’t back yet. The letters were blurred and messy, so they no longer looked like words. And they were a faint grey.
Harry wondered what would happen if Umbridge made him use the quill again—which she would, of course—and then he went to the thestral mare and let her heal it again. Would the scars eventually turn as dark as old spiderwebs? As a thestral’s coat? As Nott’s hair?
Harry found that he wouldn’t mind that, although the last thought disturbed him a little.
“Harry? What are you staring at?”
Harry jolted and hid his hand under the library table as Hermione came back, staggering under the weight of a book. “Nothing in particular,” he said, as smoothly as he could, and picked up the book with a dubious frown. “What kind of insect are you going to smash with this, Hermione, a giant cockroach?”
She poked his shoulder and hissed at him for bringing up cockroaches, which she felt about the way Ron did about spiders, and any questions she might have asked about the wound on his hand slid away. Harry found himself unsettlingly grateful for that.
*
This time, when Harry went into the Forest and held out his hand to the first thestral he saw for her to heal, Nott was already there.
By now, Harry was pretty practiced at ignoring the Slytherin. He stood there and felt the cold beating against him as the mare licked and nipped at his wound. Black blood flowed sluggishly out. Harry stared at it dreamily, and found himself wondering if anyone had tried to concoct a healing potion out of thestral spit.
Boots crunched in the snow. Nott had stepped over to the right and was standing watching him. In fact, he had leaned so close that Harry could feel Nott’s warm breath against the side of his face. He opened his eyes.
Nott was staring at him. His eyes moved back and forth between Harry’s face and his hand. He seemed to be pretty preoccupied with the idea of thestral healing spit himself. Maybe he was a good Potions brewer and wanted to use it as an ingredient.
Was Nott a good Potions brewer?
It bothered Harry suddenly that he didn’t know even though he’d shared Potions classes with the Slytherins for five years. When he thought about those classes, all that really came to mind was Snape and Malfoy and frantic whispered conversations with Ron or Hermione as he tried to get his potion right.
Nott had sat across the room from Harry for five years, but Harry didn’t really know him.
Maybe Nott had come to a similar conclusion about Harry, and decided to remedy that lack of knowledge. He cocked his head and studied Harry, his eyes luminous in the moonlight coming through the trees.
Then he turned and strode into the Forest.
Harry thought absently that Nott was taking a path further into the trees, rather than back to the school, and nearly opened his mouth to call after him. But then he shook his head and leaned harder on the mare licking his hand. No. Nott was good enough to come out into the Forest and associate with thestrals on a regular basis. He could probably defend himself.
And there was more to it, too. Harry didn’t want to break the silence around him—or at least an emptiness of human words, given that the thestrals did fill the air with licking and the sound of stamping hoofs on snow.
He and Nott got along fine as long as they didn’t speak. Harry didn’t want to find out what would happen if that changed.
*
“Did you do something, Harry?”
“Hmmm?” Harry blinked and lifted his head. He had actually slept well last night, without dreams or visions from Voldemort. Maybe it was because his wound had closed more thoroughly than last time and he didn’t even dread the inevitable way Umbridge would make him rip it open once again.
“Umbridge is in the hospital wing.” Hermione leaned towards him and lowered her voice. “No one seems to know what happened, and I know—I know you have reason to hate her. I just wondered if you sneaked into her office with your Invisibility Cloak and did something.”
Harry nearly choked on the bite of scrambled egg that he had somehow stuffed into his mouth; he didn’t even remember doing it. He put his fork down right away and fumbled for the mug of pumpkin juice in front of him.
“So you did? Harry!”
“No, no, I didn’t,” Harry reassured her frantically. He glanced around, wondering if he might see someone staring at them and waiting for a reaction, but there was nothing there. The Great Hall looked normal, other than maybe more glances at the professors’ table than usual. “I promise, Hermione. I just came back from the Forest last night and went straight to bed.”
“Why do you go to the Forest?”
“To visit the thestrals.”
Hermione just leaned back with a shake of her head. No matter how many times Harry told her that was the real reason, she thought he was making it up or hiding something else. Harry would just go on telling the truth, and maybe someday she would realize he was.
Harry glanced around the Great Hall one more time, wondering if someone in another House had had a problem with Umbridge. It wasn’t like Harry had paid much attention to anyone else Umbridge might have been calling to detentions when he had his own—
His eyes stopped on the Slytherin table, because one thing was different. Theodore Nott was staring at Harry so intently that Harry wondered how in the world he hadn’t felt the burning weight of those eyes before.
Nott tilted his own mug at Harry and took a long swallow. Then he turned around and started talking to Malfoy as if everything was perfectly normal.
Harry leaned back in his chair. He did and didn’t want to think about why Nott might have put Umbridge in the hospital wing. It was easier for everyone, he supposed, if he just didn’t. Including the thestrals and Harry and Nott themselves, if they wanted to keep meeting in the Forest the same way.
So he didn’t.
*
Harry limped his way into the Forest, grimacing as the wound on his leg broke open again. It kept bleeding, no matter what he did. He supposed he would need to go to the hospital wing in the end.
Or not, if his idea about the thestrals worked out.
Someone—he’d never seen who—had ambushed him as he was walking back to Gryffindor Tower from a detention with Snape. Harry had tried to fight back, but there had been at least three of them, and probably more. They’d torn open bleeding wounds on his face and arms and legs and hands and then fled while Harry was still trying to see past the blood pouring into his eyes from a cut on his forehead.
It could have been Gryffindors. It could have been Slytherins. It could have been anyone, given how many people hated him for his “lies.”
And once Harry had got back on his feet, he’d known he wanted to go to the Forest. The infirmary could wait until later.
He slowed as he came in under the trees and found a cloud-colored mare trotting towards him. She wasn’t the one who had licked his wounds the other times. Or maybe either of the ones; normally, Harry found it hard to tell thestrals apart. He only could with this one because her color was so unusual.
He found a place to lean on a tree and thrust his leg towards her, and the mare lowered her head and immediately began to worry and lap at the wound. That made the blood flow more freely, but the numbness spread along the injury, too. Harry tipped his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh.
A dreaming, indeterminate amount of time later, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Harry blinked and turned his head.
Nott was standing there, his eyes a silent question as they darted from the back of Harry’s hand to his leg up to his face. Harry shook his head. He was sure Umbridge had nothing to do with this. She might have “encouraged” people with her words about his lies, but his fellow students were perfectly capable of deciding to beat him up.
After all, they believed so easily that I was the Heir of Slytherin and the person who put my name in the Goblet of Fire and mad…
Nott’s hand tightened on his shoulder for a second. Then he moved around Harry as a coal-black stallion approached and took a large hunk of what looked like raw beef from his pocket. Harry watched Nott feed the thestrals, blood dripping from his hand onto the grass.
It was weird. It was peaceful.
It was where he wanted to be.
*
“We really need to learn something in Defense. Umbridge isn’t going to teach us.”
“Hmmm.” Harry bent over his Divination homework and tried to think of more ways to die that he hadn’t already used in an assignment for Trelawney. “Trampled by a thestral herd,” maybe? But part of him was reluctant to make people more fearful of thestrals even if Trelawny was the only one who would know.
Merlin, I’m going to be glad to drop this bloody class after the OWL.
Smothered by a giant would do. Harry started inventing details of the dream he’d supposedly had.
“Harry, are you listening to me?”
Harry turned around with a sigh. He found it kind of unfair that Hermione wanted to talk to him at the same time Harry was actually trying hard to finish up a homework assignment. But Ron was sitting beside her, nodding his support, and no one else was sitting close enough to them in the Gryffindor common room to overhear.
Of course not. That would require them to stop sneering at me and muttering that I’m a murderer.
“Yes, Hermione?”
“I think we should start a secret Defense group. And I think you should lead it.”
Harry stared at Hermione long enough to make her shift in her chair a little. It wasn’t on purpose. His mind was just blank and buzzing, and not the good kind of blank it went when he was with the thestrals and Nott. Then he said, “What?”
“You’re a great Defense student,” Hermione said in a rush, fidgeting with her skirt. “And other people would follow you. Once they had a chance to listen to you and figure out it doesn’t matter if they believe you or not, what matters is that this is our OWL year and we aren’t going to learn anything in Umbridge’s class—”
“It matters to me whether they believe me.”
“Harry, we can’t get anyone to join us if we emphasize that—”
“It matters to me,” Harry repeated, and leaned forwards. “Have you thought that maybe I don’t want to teach people who are always snickering at me and accusing me of lying, Hermione? Voldemort can take them for all I care.”
Hermione stared at him, apparently so surprised that she could think of nothing to say. Ron was the one to clear his throat and whisper, “I didn’t think you thought like that, Harry. You’re always talking about how everyone has to fight V-Voldemort. What changed?”
Harry sighed. He hated that he had to be delicate and think about what he was saying all the time. Other people didn’t have to. They could just say what they wanted, including that he was a murderer and a liar, and do anything they wanted.
And maybe somebody would say that was the price Harry paid for being famous, but it wasn’t like his fame had ever done him any good.
“I want people to fight him,” Harry said. “But I don’t want to have to teach them. They can learn on their own. I think you’re probably not the only one who’s figured out that we won’t learn anything from Umbridge, Hermione. Other people will study Defense by themselves.”
“But they might fail the OWL!”
“So?”
Hermione clasped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. “You don’t care about that at all?”
“They can pass on their own or fail on their own, Hermione. I don’t want to influence them one way or the other.” Harry rolled up the scroll that had his Divination homework on it. He would obviously have to go somewhere else to get anything productive done.
“It’s like you’ve changed, mate,” Ron said, and that by itself wouldn’t have upset Harry, because he did feel like he’d changed. But Ron’s eyes darted to the scar on Harry’s forehead, and that did upset him.
“If you think that someone needs to teach other people and it’s terribly important and it doesn’t matter whether they believe me,” Harry said coldly, “then one of you do it. If you think that people will listen to mad Harry Potter’s best friends.”
He turned and stomped up the stairs to the boys’ dormitory. People all over the common room who’d been gaping at him promptly tried to act as if they hadn’t been looking at all.
Harry rolled his eyes and slammed the door behind him.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: AU starting in fifth year, angst, mild gore, mentions of violence and minor character deaths
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3000
Summary: When Harry goes to feed thestrals in the Forbidden Forest as a break from the Awful Year of Umbridge, he finds Theo Nott already there. An unexpected relationship forms, bound by silence and blood.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. Ale_aesthetic asked for a story with Harry/Theo, fifth year, and thestrals.
To Hold or Break a Heart
Harry ducked under the great branches of a dead oak that loomed above him, felt in his pocket for a slice of raw meat, glanced up, and froze.
There was another Hogwarts student standing in front of the thestrals, and it definitely wasn’t Luna Lovegood, the only other one Harry had thought might be out here. He was tall, with dark robes and dark brown hair bound in a twist that flowed halfway down his back.
He turned around when he heard Harry’s footsteps crunching in the dead grass and stood there staring at him.
Nott, Harry thought, but the word caught in his throat.
Nott was pale, thin, with black eyes that looked like slashes in his face. But more to the point, he was a Slytherin, and just in case Harry might have thought he was mistaken in that assumption, a silver snake pin wriggled across Nott’s collar.
Harry really did not want to deal with a Slytherin right now. He had come out to get away from Malfoy’s taunts about Harry not being able to play Quidditch anymore, and away from Umbridge, and away from—
Nott, he realized, was tense. But he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t laugh. He kept holding his hand out so that the tall thestral mare in front of him, who even loomed over Nott, could take delicate bites of what looked like a dead rabbit in his palm.
Harry was too tired to walk away or speak.
Instead, he stepped up beside Nott and held out his own offering. A thestral foal pranced towards him and grabbed the meat in sharp teeth, squealing. Nott took a jagged breath, but he didn’t say anything, either.
That was perfect. That was all Harry wanted.
He touched the foal’s neck as it devoured the beef he’d brought, and listened to Nott’s steady breathing beside him. It evened out, and Nott took another dead rabbit out of his robe pocket and held it out to another thestral. This one looked like a stallion.
The crunch of teeth on frozen flesh and bone and the tearing and ripping of fur soothed something inexplicable inside Harry.
He brought out more raw meat he’d got from the house-elves for the first foal and another who pranced up when the first piece was gone, and stroked their cold necks and touched their manes—like piano wire—and was exquisitely aware the whole time of Nott standing beside him.
Then the air beside Harry seemed to ripple, and he looked away from the foals for the first time since he’d started feeding the second one.
Nott was gone.
*
Harry ran into the Forest, his teeth bared and his feet whisper-quick in the leaves. Part of him thought this might be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, running into the Forbidden Forest at night with his hand ripped open and bleeding from Umbridge’s detention.
But he didn’t care. He didn’t. He was following the idea that had come to him earlier, and he would follow it to the end of the path.
When he came into the clearing where he had fed the thestral foals before, two great beasts were waiting for him. One was a stallion that loomed like a cabinet against the darkness, and one was a mare paler than most of them, with a sheen to her coat like silver. Harry promptly walked up to her and lifted his hand.
The mare sniffed, her nostrils opening into black pits as she did. Then she began to lap at the blood that coated Harry’s knuckles. Her tongue felt rough and bristly, like a cat’s.
Harry leaned against her, against the chill that beat at his legs and body like a patch of oddly-shaped wind, and panted, and didn’t even flinch when the stallion nudged his shoulder with a hard nose. The sound of the mare feeding didn’t travel far away from them.
But the sound that came from behind Harry did.
Harry opened his eyes and twisted his head. He couldn’t do anything else without moving his hand away from the mare’s mouth or nudging the stallion back from him.
And he didn’t want to.
Nott stood framed between two trees that arched above the path into the clearing, his eyes so wide that Harry thought he could see both himself and the thestrals in the other boy’s gaze. Harry shook his head and turned away, shutting his eyes, refusing the vision, leaning on the mare.
It didn’t matter. If Nott went back and spread around the story that Harry was mental and liked to associate with death horses in the Forest, how would that be worse than the ones people snickered about right now?
Silence, and more silence, and then there was the crushing noise of grass as Nott walked forwards. Harry snuggled further into the mare’s side. Maybe it was just because the mare’s tongue touching him was like someone petting his hand, but Harry did feel like the wound hurt less.
The stallion turned sideways, his tail flicking lightly against Harry’s shoulder. Then Harry heard the gulp and working of his throat, and knew Nott must have given the thestral something to eat.
It didn’t matter. Harry leaned on the thestral mare and let the world spiral away around him.
Something brushed his shoulder. Nott was touching him with a hand splayed flat.
Harry cuddled closer into the mare and let the world spiral and fall away even further.
*
The wound that the thestral mare’s tongue had cleaned was healed.
Harry was staring at the scars the letters had healed into that day in the library, when he had some time by himself because Hermione had gone to get a book and wasn’t back yet. The letters were blurred and messy, so they no longer looked like words. And they were a faint grey.
Harry wondered what would happen if Umbridge made him use the quill again—which she would, of course—and then he went to the thestral mare and let her heal it again. Would the scars eventually turn as dark as old spiderwebs? As a thestral’s coat? As Nott’s hair?
Harry found that he wouldn’t mind that, although the last thought disturbed him a little.
“Harry? What are you staring at?”
Harry jolted and hid his hand under the library table as Hermione came back, staggering under the weight of a book. “Nothing in particular,” he said, as smoothly as he could, and picked up the book with a dubious frown. “What kind of insect are you going to smash with this, Hermione, a giant cockroach?”
She poked his shoulder and hissed at him for bringing up cockroaches, which she felt about the way Ron did about spiders, and any questions she might have asked about the wound on his hand slid away. Harry found himself unsettlingly grateful for that.
*
This time, when Harry went into the Forest and held out his hand to the first thestral he saw for her to heal, Nott was already there.
By now, Harry was pretty practiced at ignoring the Slytherin. He stood there and felt the cold beating against him as the mare licked and nipped at his wound. Black blood flowed sluggishly out. Harry stared at it dreamily, and found himself wondering if anyone had tried to concoct a healing potion out of thestral spit.
Boots crunched in the snow. Nott had stepped over to the right and was standing watching him. In fact, he had leaned so close that Harry could feel Nott’s warm breath against the side of his face. He opened his eyes.
Nott was staring at him. His eyes moved back and forth between Harry’s face and his hand. He seemed to be pretty preoccupied with the idea of thestral healing spit himself. Maybe he was a good Potions brewer and wanted to use it as an ingredient.
Was Nott a good Potions brewer?
It bothered Harry suddenly that he didn’t know even though he’d shared Potions classes with the Slytherins for five years. When he thought about those classes, all that really came to mind was Snape and Malfoy and frantic whispered conversations with Ron or Hermione as he tried to get his potion right.
Nott had sat across the room from Harry for five years, but Harry didn’t really know him.
Maybe Nott had come to a similar conclusion about Harry, and decided to remedy that lack of knowledge. He cocked his head and studied Harry, his eyes luminous in the moonlight coming through the trees.
Then he turned and strode into the Forest.
Harry thought absently that Nott was taking a path further into the trees, rather than back to the school, and nearly opened his mouth to call after him. But then he shook his head and leaned harder on the mare licking his hand. No. Nott was good enough to come out into the Forest and associate with thestrals on a regular basis. He could probably defend himself.
And there was more to it, too. Harry didn’t want to break the silence around him—or at least an emptiness of human words, given that the thestrals did fill the air with licking and the sound of stamping hoofs on snow.
He and Nott got along fine as long as they didn’t speak. Harry didn’t want to find out what would happen if that changed.
*
“Did you do something, Harry?”
“Hmmm?” Harry blinked and lifted his head. He had actually slept well last night, without dreams or visions from Voldemort. Maybe it was because his wound had closed more thoroughly than last time and he didn’t even dread the inevitable way Umbridge would make him rip it open once again.
“Umbridge is in the hospital wing.” Hermione leaned towards him and lowered her voice. “No one seems to know what happened, and I know—I know you have reason to hate her. I just wondered if you sneaked into her office with your Invisibility Cloak and did something.”
Harry nearly choked on the bite of scrambled egg that he had somehow stuffed into his mouth; he didn’t even remember doing it. He put his fork down right away and fumbled for the mug of pumpkin juice in front of him.
“So you did? Harry!”
“No, no, I didn’t,” Harry reassured her frantically. He glanced around, wondering if he might see someone staring at them and waiting for a reaction, but there was nothing there. The Great Hall looked normal, other than maybe more glances at the professors’ table than usual. “I promise, Hermione. I just came back from the Forest last night and went straight to bed.”
“Why do you go to the Forest?”
“To visit the thestrals.”
Hermione just leaned back with a shake of her head. No matter how many times Harry told her that was the real reason, she thought he was making it up or hiding something else. Harry would just go on telling the truth, and maybe someday she would realize he was.
Harry glanced around the Great Hall one more time, wondering if someone in another House had had a problem with Umbridge. It wasn’t like Harry had paid much attention to anyone else Umbridge might have been calling to detentions when he had his own—
His eyes stopped on the Slytherin table, because one thing was different. Theodore Nott was staring at Harry so intently that Harry wondered how in the world he hadn’t felt the burning weight of those eyes before.
Nott tilted his own mug at Harry and took a long swallow. Then he turned around and started talking to Malfoy as if everything was perfectly normal.
Harry leaned back in his chair. He did and didn’t want to think about why Nott might have put Umbridge in the hospital wing. It was easier for everyone, he supposed, if he just didn’t. Including the thestrals and Harry and Nott themselves, if they wanted to keep meeting in the Forest the same way.
So he didn’t.
*
Harry limped his way into the Forest, grimacing as the wound on his leg broke open again. It kept bleeding, no matter what he did. He supposed he would need to go to the hospital wing in the end.
Or not, if his idea about the thestrals worked out.
Someone—he’d never seen who—had ambushed him as he was walking back to Gryffindor Tower from a detention with Snape. Harry had tried to fight back, but there had been at least three of them, and probably more. They’d torn open bleeding wounds on his face and arms and legs and hands and then fled while Harry was still trying to see past the blood pouring into his eyes from a cut on his forehead.
It could have been Gryffindors. It could have been Slytherins. It could have been anyone, given how many people hated him for his “lies.”
And once Harry had got back on his feet, he’d known he wanted to go to the Forest. The infirmary could wait until later.
He slowed as he came in under the trees and found a cloud-colored mare trotting towards him. She wasn’t the one who had licked his wounds the other times. Or maybe either of the ones; normally, Harry found it hard to tell thestrals apart. He only could with this one because her color was so unusual.
He found a place to lean on a tree and thrust his leg towards her, and the mare lowered her head and immediately began to worry and lap at the wound. That made the blood flow more freely, but the numbness spread along the injury, too. Harry tipped his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh.
A dreaming, indeterminate amount of time later, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Harry blinked and turned his head.
Nott was standing there, his eyes a silent question as they darted from the back of Harry’s hand to his leg up to his face. Harry shook his head. He was sure Umbridge had nothing to do with this. She might have “encouraged” people with her words about his lies, but his fellow students were perfectly capable of deciding to beat him up.
After all, they believed so easily that I was the Heir of Slytherin and the person who put my name in the Goblet of Fire and mad…
Nott’s hand tightened on his shoulder for a second. Then he moved around Harry as a coal-black stallion approached and took a large hunk of what looked like raw beef from his pocket. Harry watched Nott feed the thestrals, blood dripping from his hand onto the grass.
It was weird. It was peaceful.
It was where he wanted to be.
*
“We really need to learn something in Defense. Umbridge isn’t going to teach us.”
“Hmmm.” Harry bent over his Divination homework and tried to think of more ways to die that he hadn’t already used in an assignment for Trelawney. “Trampled by a thestral herd,” maybe? But part of him was reluctant to make people more fearful of thestrals even if Trelawny was the only one who would know.
Merlin, I’m going to be glad to drop this bloody class after the OWL.
Smothered by a giant would do. Harry started inventing details of the dream he’d supposedly had.
“Harry, are you listening to me?”
Harry turned around with a sigh. He found it kind of unfair that Hermione wanted to talk to him at the same time Harry was actually trying hard to finish up a homework assignment. But Ron was sitting beside her, nodding his support, and no one else was sitting close enough to them in the Gryffindor common room to overhear.
Of course not. That would require them to stop sneering at me and muttering that I’m a murderer.
“Yes, Hermione?”
“I think we should start a secret Defense group. And I think you should lead it.”
Harry stared at Hermione long enough to make her shift in her chair a little. It wasn’t on purpose. His mind was just blank and buzzing, and not the good kind of blank it went when he was with the thestrals and Nott. Then he said, “What?”
“You’re a great Defense student,” Hermione said in a rush, fidgeting with her skirt. “And other people would follow you. Once they had a chance to listen to you and figure out it doesn’t matter if they believe you or not, what matters is that this is our OWL year and we aren’t going to learn anything in Umbridge’s class—”
“It matters to me whether they believe me.”
“Harry, we can’t get anyone to join us if we emphasize that—”
“It matters to me,” Harry repeated, and leaned forwards. “Have you thought that maybe I don’t want to teach people who are always snickering at me and accusing me of lying, Hermione? Voldemort can take them for all I care.”
Hermione stared at him, apparently so surprised that she could think of nothing to say. Ron was the one to clear his throat and whisper, “I didn’t think you thought like that, Harry. You’re always talking about how everyone has to fight V-Voldemort. What changed?”
Harry sighed. He hated that he had to be delicate and think about what he was saying all the time. Other people didn’t have to. They could just say what they wanted, including that he was a murderer and a liar, and do anything they wanted.
And maybe somebody would say that was the price Harry paid for being famous, but it wasn’t like his fame had ever done him any good.
“I want people to fight him,” Harry said. “But I don’t want to have to teach them. They can learn on their own. I think you’re probably not the only one who’s figured out that we won’t learn anything from Umbridge, Hermione. Other people will study Defense by themselves.”
“But they might fail the OWL!”
“So?”
Hermione clasped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. “You don’t care about that at all?”
“They can pass on their own or fail on their own, Hermione. I don’t want to influence them one way or the other.” Harry rolled up the scroll that had his Divination homework on it. He would obviously have to go somewhere else to get anything productive done.
“It’s like you’ve changed, mate,” Ron said, and that by itself wouldn’t have upset Harry, because he did feel like he’d changed. But Ron’s eyes darted to the scar on Harry’s forehead, and that did upset him.
“If you think that someone needs to teach other people and it’s terribly important and it doesn’t matter whether they believe me,” Harry said coldly, “then one of you do it. If you think that people will listen to mad Harry Potter’s best friends.”
He turned and stomped up the stairs to the boys’ dormitory. People all over the common room who’d been gaping at him promptly tried to act as if they hadn’t been looking at all.
Harry rolled his eyes and slammed the door behind him.
